Josh Homme on the four albums that shaped his career: “It’s time for you to revolt”
Whenever someone is first getting into music, the first records are really a fixture of what your future will look like. While there might be a few times when people pick up a band that they come to regret later, it’s important to remember those moments when the music started as a passing fancy and became something you’re willing to devote your life to. And when Josh Homme first got ahold of his own flavour of rock and roll, it was the equivalent of someone going through a religious conversion.
Then again, Homme was never one to pin down a certain genre label. He did have his favourites that he listened to from back in the day, but listening to every one of Queens of the Stone Age’s albums, it was always about breaking down what had come before, whether that was the robot rock of their debut, the danceable qualities of Villains, or Homme being happy to survive a brush with death on …Like Clockwork.
Although there’s a metallic tinge to a lot of what Homme does, that was never how he thought about his music. Sure, Kyuss could put together a riff worthy of any Black Sabbath record, but when listening through his first major albums, Homme always gravitated towards a punk rock attitude rather than trying to be some metal warlord.
After all, the atmosphere that he grew up in in the California desert scene was all about finding one’s own voice, and that didn’t necessarily cater to whatever bands like Judas Priest or Iron Maiden were doing. And when it came time to dig into what rock and roll should sound like, Homme remembered going for the stone age of punk.
Outside of buying the compilation Eastern Front as a kid, Homme remembered going back and listening to everything from protopunk to the darkest music he could get his hands on, saying, “I bought [Eastern Front] purely for the cover. People say don’t judge a book by its cover, but that’s what people with a s—ty cover say. The next three were the Cramps’…Off the Bone, Misfits’ Legacy of Brutality, and the Stooges’ Raw Power. When it’s time for you to revolt and buy real music, no matter what you end up buying, you’re kind of looking to go wild.”
While Homme’s first records are practically four different flavours of punk rock, it never felt that way to him. All good music was about some sort of rebellion, and even if Glenn Danzig was far more intimidating than Iggy Pop was in his prime, each of them had the hooks to back the songs up, whether that Pop ready for war on ‘Search and Destroy’ or Danzig making a pitch-black take on power pop on ‘Hybrid Moments’.
Looking at the way that Homme approached his own craft, there are many elements he carried into Queens that started with these records. Every facet of punk was about taking something away and making things simpler, and by taking out different notes of the traditional blues scale, Homme found the kind of guitar tone that made everything sound slightly off, as if he was making the stoner rock version of a campy horror movie whenever he played a solo.
More than anything, though, any artist could benefit from taking what Homme said to heart when talking about any punk album. Sure, it might be about revolting and going wild half the time, but once people start digging underneath the surface, there is a lot more to learn than three simple chords. It’s simple in one way, but if there’s one thing to get out of any punk record, it’s about finding out who you are.
